EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy say so, I will respect that. If I don't know that you want your email address published, then I won't. Be aware, though, that I am (usually) human and make mistakes.

I slept in a little bit, nice to say. Yesterday I was up at about 3 hours before the crack of dawn. So I stayed up until nearly midnight last night, futzing with Grinch (about the troubles with, more shortly). Then I slept rather soundly, thanks very much. Starting today's list is taking the truck in for some past due attention - oil, lube, filters, etc. Then back to Grinch.

The configuration: DSL incoming to Grendel, Linux (Mandrake 6.1, updated, with enhancements for security. Grendel is multi-homed - one NIC points outbound at the DSL modem. The other NIC is inbound, with a non-routable IP address which lies on the internal network. Grendel provides firewall, IP Masquerade and routing services for the rest of the network, which is comprised of Marcia's HP Pavillion Celeron 400 Win98 box and most recently Grinch, a PIII 600 dual boot box (dual boot because I need Windows for work, and my games all run on that boot).

Now, if you were following last week's escapades, you will know that I had a good, solid installation of Debian 2.2 going. It was working fine. The upshot is that yesterday, I lost outer world connectivity from the Linux boot side of the box. Something has changed, and I am not sure what. Once the chores and running around are complete, or at least in progress, then I am going to delve into this. Oddly, although I could get neither Debian, nor Mandrake to talk to the net from Grinch... if I boot Windows, I connect just fine?!?!?!? How odd. More later.

Oh. The search thingy is broken too. Must be more secure than what existed before - if you can't execute something, then it's more secure, right? Like a room without doors can't be entered, right? Sigh. One time at a thing. Later.

One problem solved. After mucking about with the httpd.conf file a bit, and rummaging in the new httpd.conf file loaded by the server upgrade last weekend, I determined that I wasn't loading the mod_perl properly, first. Then a couple of other gotcha's surfaced which lead me to use the new httpd.conf file, with my old VirtualHosts section copied out of the old httpd.conf. Search seems to be fine now. So I probably broke something else in the process, you say? Well, almost certainly, but the coffee is finally ready, and when I break something, then fix it, I learn. You suffer, I learn. See the difference, Tom? <SEG> More in a while.

Slaughtered the second one, too. Unfortunately, not quite sure what happened - I do believe that upgrading all of the material used to create my debian unstable installation has made it just a little more stable. There are a couple of items broken in the latest revision that weren't before, like being able to create new mount points on the fly, automagically, during the install routine. So I faked it, hitting ALT-Fn, until I got a console prompt, then spelunking the temporary directory tree until I found where to put these things (like the windows partition that contained base2_2.tgz, the December 20 version). Got it up and running though, and got asked questions a little differently somehow, then connectivity worked - the link came right up, and the system was able to update itself via the Internet, as it was last week, too. Well, you get what you pay for, and I learn such interesting things when playing with the bleeding edge, especially on the non-server machine.

I also have to go hunting for a trial copy of Electronic Workbench, a trio of tools for use in schematic capture, pcb design and circuit simulation. I have heard reasonably good things about the software, not least that it is dramatically cheaper than most of the competition. While that fact may contain hidden drawbacks, ETS doesn't need the vast functionality of the Orcad or latest Protel offerings (at $ 5K ++). If they seem worthy, then I can get the low end Electronic Workbench tools as a set for about $800 US. I will report on the evaluation later this week.

From the grab bag (with a nod of the head to Jim ??? (used to be a SF Chronicle column, weekly))... Later this week (Wednesday, I believe) is the hearing in Santa Clara County Superior Court regarding the DVD CCA group against the guys who just wanted to look at DVD's using Linux, and since no vendor was putting out a driver ... anyway, there are named and unnamed defendants, all of whom have posted, or have posted links to, the DeCSS code. Some info can be found here, like the text of the complaint, as well as other pertinent materials, I believe.

Jakob Nielsen has posted yet another Alertbox, this the annual predictions newsletter. Check it out. My favorite, the line at the bottom, "Too many sites run on software that has been patched together in a hurry without the oversight of a senior software architect." Wait. I resemble that remark. Like I could afford a senior software architect. I guess y'all will just have to put up with me, Apprentice Village Idiot (Junior Grade).

Interesting collection of stuff on Slashdot today, from a letter about the DVD CCA injunction hearing (mentioned above), to commentary on ICEwm and Fortune Magazine naming Linus Torvalds as one of the people to watch in 2K. For those of you that don't know, once you register at Slashdot, you may, at your convenience, change the view, to weed out those comments that have been moderated down (or rather, limit your view to those that have been moderated up). At ionosphere levels, you can actually get low count commentary with a high signal to noise ratio.

Meanwhile, over at LinuxToday I found this reference to an feature from the LinuxCare site about adding a new hard disk into an existing installation. Very cool, very easy, and you may need to know how to do this someday. Sure would be nice to do something similar under Windows, neh? Let's say you are running on a 2.1G drive on an older system. No problems, really, except that your 'My Documents' folder has grown so that now the HD is just too full. Well, under Linux, you can add a hard drive, move the contents of 'My Documents' (in my case /home/brian) to the new drive, then simply mount the new hard drive to the location in the directory pointed to by 'My Documents'. <G> Oh, sorry, can't do that under Windows. But then, I can't play MotoCross Madness on Linux, either (yet!).


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Hello, visitors from Dr. K's. The bit Chris was linking to is just above, but here's a pointer to get you there quick. He meant well. If you have time, have a look around. Welcome! [added 12/29/1999 bpb]

So. The results of the successful re-install of Debian yesterday are in. There are broken bits in the unstable package (well, duh) but everything I need is up and running. You see to the left a working screen, with Netscape 4.7, Xemacs and AbiWord running. To the right is relaxation time, with FreeCIV running. I don't know how to play that, really, but if I ever find that I actually care to, I understand there are LOTS of resources about Civilization out on the Wide Weird Web. You will note that I have a slightly, well, different sort of look for the Debian desktop. Well, two things are true. First, I have settled on IceWM as a window manager for the time being. The memory footprint is tiny (no, don't ask me to quantify that right now, I can't, but the download was miniscule, perhaps 300K?

Second, the theme I selected for the desktop is called 'Natural'. The reason for such a distinctive, and some might say, odd look is obvious in hindsight. I have at least three different operating systems that I might be displaying on this monitor at any given time, all with either the press of a switch (the KVM, between Grinch and Grendel) or a context switch (when using a VMware virtual machine. It is clearly (now) such a very good idea to have each bootable OS take on such a different look, so that I am not confused about which environment which is active at the moment. It would appear that the computers are better at task switching than I am. For themes, there is a great resource called themes.org. If you are running any of the GUI's under Linux, check it out.

On today's platter, I have the Cavalier to take in for service. The truck came through just fine yesterday, with leaking brake cylinders in back to be fixed, along with the oil, lube, filters, etc. We deal with Precision Tune. They are very local to us (about a mile up the road, a good excuse for a walk). The quality of their work is fine, and they won't necessarily do work that I give them permission to do. That may sound odd, but when I give them the keys and say "Do the oil, lube and filters, and give it a physical." They come back with results of the physical, and prognosis, but also say that they didn't need to replace this air filter, and although the mileage would indicate that it is time to flush and fill the transmission, the fluid looks fine, so we'll just keep an eye on that, OK?

I have been too scattered. I am going to use the Debian boot on Grinch to work through my Perl books over the next few days in a severely dedicated fashion. I want to actually complete something, eh? I know, an ambitious goal, and one perhaps beyond my means (you know I jest, neh?) But I am easily distracted sometimes, and without a distinct goal in mind beyond learning new stuff, I could end up like Mallory - lofty goals, but in the end frozen and dead. Oooh. Ick. Sorry. Anyway, I am absorbing my first cuppa joe, and will check back in later today with some drivel which distracts me - I will offer it up for your inspection at that time. Ciao.

A new report? Well, not exactly, more like a tutorial. I have a friend who is across the country, runs Windows and has a terribly crowded 'My Documents' folder. Try to describe the steps necessary to clean up and organize such a thing, verbally. I saw a recipe for massive frustration, so said that I would put together a few screen shots and some directions, which hopefully would help. The page is here. If you have feedback for me, I would appreciate it. I am going to send the ref. off now, though, then walk back down to Precision Tune to pick up the car and run a couple of errands. Then back, and back to Perl.

Webalizer is the name of the tool that I use for webserver log analysis. The home page for Webalizer is here. The package's sole drawback is that in the version that I have been using, the graphs and charts are generated in GIF format. Since Webalizer is a free tool, and the graphing tool library that the charting is based upon is open source, then the tool puts websites at risk of tangling with the Unisys Legal Profit Center (ULPC).

Good news, now. As I went a'hunting for stuff yesterday, I wandered through the site of Thomas Boutell, author/maintainer of GD. On the GD index page, I discover that the latest version of this software generates PNG images rather than GIF files. Now to get and integrate this with Webalizer. Not tonight, though. This bug that keeps coming and going is visiting again. Oh, well. I guess some extra rest couldn't hurt. Have a nice evening and I will see y'all tomorrow.


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Y2K can still catch everyone off-guard. The problem with the essential interconnectedness of things (as Dirk Gently might say) is that in order to find your lost cat, I would need to spend significant time on a beach in the Bahamas. More to the point, we know that there are weak links in the chains that bind this world economy together. Offsetting that weakness is the multitude of paths available for goods and information to flow over. The question is, how many links are actually going to break, and will that be enough to topple the house of cards.

I am not so worried about Russian missiles firing off in error. Nothing I can do about that risk except lose sleep, and I refuse to do that. Nor am I worried about significant immediate service disruptions stateside. But longer term effects may from failures in other parts of the world. When remediation is an activity that requires more resources than are available, then the economic effects are going to be cumulative and . . . interesting, at least.

Of course, this probably will all roll by without a whimper. I do find it interesting how shrill and worried some news reports and commentators are, while others are less concerned, because either they know so or due to a combination of ignorance and denial. Come the day after, there will be 'I told you so.' and 'We never made that claim.' flying about like there is no tomorrow. <SEG> Lawyers, you just gotta love'm, heh?

On the 'feh' side of the ledger, the viral whatever that I seemed to be coming down with again last night appears to be symptomatically resolving itself into a hum-dinger of a sore throat. Sigh. I haven't had a sore throat in years, except due to the smoking, and that ended 9 months ago. Oh, thanks, Dr. K. Chris W-J (aka Dr. Keyboard) has done a bang up job of linking into this site today. With the sole exceptions of applying dyslexia to the spelling of my name, and linking to the part of this week's page which is beyond the point referred to, I have nary a complaint about his work <g> Let me put a correcting pointerO in at the entry point for Tuesday, so that linker's in won't get too confused.

On the Perl front, I am again facing Chapter 7, Regular Expressions. OK, what's regular about that? I know, I know, but really now. I have stumbled over the Regex hurdle before (like the matchbox jumping bit in the Upper Class Twit of the Year contest). Later, a Costco run for some final stockup, coffee and such. Coffee may be necessary, as we normally arise between 5 and 6, and are rarely awake beyond 23:00. But, as Bob says, who knows what will really happen? The song goes something like 'Two men on the corner, both of'm say they're Jesus, one of'm must be wrong." In about another year, it will be time for the discovery of TMA1, if I am not sorely mistaken. Later, folks.

'Not much fun' is right on the money. In my browsing about today, just a quick jaunt really, kinda settle my head before diving into Perl, and it turns up that there is an exploit for SSH 1.2.27. Just what I need to make my day. Secure machine to machine connections which are not proprietary are tricky, for a couple of reasons. Proprietary software usually means closed source, and if the source cannot be audited, by anyone and everyone, then security is a joke. Open source, of course falls foul of US crypto laws, so while some very bright people work on this stuff, there are more hints and nudges than pointers to tools that work out of the box.

Now, we understand that I am not a neophyte in these matters. Nor am I a guru. Just reasonably competent, I can find, configure and compile most software, from sources where appropriate (and this is one of those "appropriate" applications). So, other than sticking with vanilla SSH, which has a closed, proprietary code base, I go a hunting for other solutions. Bear in mind, that for a daemon running on this system, I need a compatible Win client, for access from work. I began looking into OpenSSH, a port from the BSD camp into Linux, of a non-patent-encumbered, clean codebase version of SSH functionality. But it depends on libraries I can't find, not yet. So back to the SSH pages I go, scrutinizing more closely. There, in squiggly little text, to the right and down a bit, a patch to the 1.2.27 code for the buffer overflow exploit. Installed, re-compiled, re-installed and killall -HUP sshd. Voila. I still want a better solution, but it may not happen until the new crypto laws get through, if they survive in any coherent manner. I got portscanned a couple of times, day before yesterday. Hello, people. Readers, if you have a site, keep an eye peeled for these sites... they may be spoofed info, but some information is better than none.

a24b94n82client104.hawaii.rr.com/24.94.82.104
guppy.blacktop.com/206.79.22.0

.SIG of the Moment Department - "Hey God! What's with the "Thou shalt not kill" in RFC6?" --Moses

The DVD CCA (DVD Copy Control Association) came to court this morning, hat in hand, asking that a California Superior Court Judge, William Elfving, grant them a Temporary Restraining Order. This TRO was to have the effect of removing all copies of DeCSS from public access via the internet (snicker). You see, there were no tools for viewing DVD movies on a Linux box. You could still copy the movies from one DVD drive to another (at rather horrid expense), but you couldn't view them. Some OS coder's in Norway had a copy of Xing's decoder, which turned out to be flawed, in that it exposed the rather weak (5 byte code) encryption scheme espoused by the CCA as protection for the DVD movies.

"Yeehaw!" Proclaimed the Open Source digerati. Not so fast said the CCA. Yup. So fast after all. Copies of the code are online world wide in hours, legally reverse engineered (I say legally because of my presumtion of innocence until proof of guilt becomes available). Oh, did I say 'available?'. Yes, by gum, I did. You can also grab a copy of the source right here.

Now don't expect me to go out chaining myself to redwood trees or anything silly. But, free the source. Hell, I don't even know how to use this yet - not sure it works or compiles, more on that topic tomorrow. We'll try it out on the perfectly legitimate, purchased earlier today, copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall. Meantime, if you want to know more about this stuff, go over to Chris DiBona's site, sub DVD Crap. He is Linux Evangelist at VA Linux Systems, and President of SVLUG. Should take you where you need to go to get the low-down. Oh, and here's another source of information on the topic - a linkfarm for the DVD CCA DeCSS topic at Rick Moen's site.


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Morning, all. Upright, sick and tired (UST). Somehow, I have the feeling that I would have been better off working this week. The problem with 'time off' is that there are hundreds of things that I could be doing. Feeling as I do (physically, anyway) and without any real requirement to actually do any of those projects . . . well, you get the picture. There are some chores and errands that I must do today, so we're just going to have this little intro, then I be back later.

Shawn's pictures of Tom's office, along with Tom's ghostwriter, are posted here. In other news, eToys has backed off, dropping its suit against the eToy.com site where a group of Euro artists were posting their material. So the suit is gone, eh? Then where's the site? Not Found! Well, it may take a few days to convince the ISP that all is well in Toyland.

Time for coffee, a shower, a little breakfast and some errands. Catch you later.

On the gripping hand, perhaps chores first. Tell me, if the power goes out for a few days, are you prepared? Well sure, sez you. Enough food, enough water, a modicum of firewood, some blankets, clean clothes ... did you say clean clothes? Now it isn't going to kill you soon to wear dirtly clothes. However, I am a fan of clean underwear, socks, etc. Humanity did long without such amenities, but I am soft, here in Mankind's dotage. So, since the washers were open, in went the laundry. Last items shopping is next on the list, along with re-organizing stuff inside viz. stuff in the garage. Tank up the truck today. Car tomorrow. Bake all five trays of brownies from the restaurant size package I picked up at Costco yesterday. (NO, not that kind of brownie! Sheesh!). Go into sugar coma. Then wait for the fireworks to start (or not).

The stock markets appear to be unconcerned about the possibilities that tomorrow midnight might bring. If everything goes well, then it shouldn't matter. If, instead, everything does actually go to schiess, then good stock picks will go right down the tubes along with the bad. On the middle road... Who knows? Beatles in hiding, as George Harrison and frau attacked at home by knife-wielding assailant. Sigh. Here we go again. Paul is dead. Paul is dead. Paul is dead. Now get over it, people. These are just greying rock stars, not deities!

Lastly, I 'assumed' that, because I had read the word 'bellweather' so many times in the popular press, books and other such, that the foregoing is the correct spelling. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, off the Brittanica site, the correct spelling is 'bellwether'. Who knew? Well, Bob Thompson knew. Almost everybody knew except me, and a few reporters, I guess. Sigh. See you around.

Once a few weeks ago, I wrote about a terribly secure version of Linux that I had read about, but then lost the reference even before I read it. Now it turns up in a banner ad at freshmeat. The web serving appliance is called Brickhouse, and it is available from a place called thirdpig.com, a site run by SAGE, out of Texas. This is independent of Moshe's Kha0s stuff, methinks. One thing I find interesting is that, although they are running a version of Linux, I don't see a way to get the source. This is unusual, and warrents an email asking the question. More as I know more.

I have been so far unsuccessful at getting webalizer to compile using the new GD library. I really don't know that I want to delve so far into this right now. It is fast, and GPL'd, but those GIF's. To show you graphs, I run gif2png on them. Early tommorrow, I will do a webstats snapshot, should have cleared 15K raw hits easily, way over November's 8K+. I may look at alternatives, or fix webalizer myself. Webalizer's home page doesn't show any updates past July last. That's quite a long time, when it is a tool that puts out encumbered graphics.

All the running and chores are done, I feel . . . shall we say, less than chipper. Nope, not chipper/shredder, Bob! Nice try, though. I am looking now at pages for reporting tools to make nice looking Analog reports. We shall see. Maybe I will write my own. Anything's possible.

One of the things that I found annoying... wait a moment, please, while I check something. Oh, good, my effort was worth something, then. To explain. Yesterday, when I went to Chris DiBona's site to snag a copy of the DeCSS code, I just used cut and paste to snag it off of the web page, and into an editor, for a separate file. The problem, of course, is that since Chris uses tables, and the code is oddly indented on the table, it looks really ugly when you import it off of a webpage. Since I am working through regular expressions in Perl, this sounds like an application. Yesterday, I was too tired to do anything but manually strip the leading whitespace off before importing into the page. Today I wrote a perl script to do just that for me, and for you.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# wh-strip.pl
# will accept input from  or commandline files,
# output to , may be redirected or piped.
# if a line has non-space characters on it, then
# leading whitespace is stripped off.

@myin = <>;  # get the input, either from $ARGV or from STDIN

foreach (@myin) {
    if (/\S/) {    # if there are non-space characters on input line
	s/^\s*//;  # get rid of ALL spaces up to the next word
    }
    print;         # and print that
}

Aside from that, resources for DVD on Linux, etc. include OpenDVD. Another site of interest is LinuxVideo.org (aka LiViD, although their site is problematic right now, perhaps due to a slashdot effect). The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is assisting in the defense of the DeCSS people, and deserve your support as well.


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Yeltsin quits. UK credit card terminals fail in waning days of Y1999. Hijackers release hostages. And although Jerry says in his pages that it is over, the DVD CCA only failed in their attempt to get a temporary injunction, ex parte (or something like that, preemtive as it were). The next hearing, on January 14, will be for the purposes of determining whether a preliminary injuntion against the posters of and linkers to the DeCSS source code. Arguments against an injunction from the defendents are due 01/07, the CCA's lawyers have to respond by 01/12. Arguments on the 14th. This never ends. Jerry had this right though - "The Internet sees censorship as damage, and routes around it. The result of this will be that EVERYONE will have copies of this code." Here is a copy of the summons resulting from Wednesday's hearing.

I am off to work momentarily, tightly fitting on my IT hat, as I go to do backups and shutdowns for ETS. The rollover has begun, NZ is in the new year, along with eastern Russia, and Y2K is rolling across Asia and Australia as I write. What I really do wonder is whether Bo was right, and GMT is going to be the real kicker for this thing - lots of systems are set not to local time, but GMT, for coordination purposes. We shall see, we shall see. Have a wonderful New Year's Eve day. Later.

Sigh. Have you read Dr. Pournelle's post for today, 12/31/1999? Do go read it, here's the link (after Sunday the link will be here) He writes well, and from an extremely well educated perch. That said, I find his eloquence today to be inutterably depressing. That's why the 'Sigh.'

And, for most of us, in this day and age, there IS enough intellectual and 
moral capital to sustain us for years to come. Most of us have not accepted 
the clear implications of our own conclusions.

Perhaps he is correct. There are times when I can look even at myself, and see that cartoonish ostrich, head carelessly buried in the sand, quite sure that the danger it cannot see does not threaten. He is right, you know, about Waco. Dark days, dark days.

Then, there have always been dark days, sprinkled throughout man's history. The witch burnings at Salem, Mass. The Inquisition. The Crusades. Many other events, other places, other times. In certain aspects, these can become the defining characteristics of Mankind. Brutality. Agression. Yet we have survived. In this century, we have survived an era which so easily could have tipped into a world turned to radioactive cinder and ash. Yet we avoided that fate. There is still a nuclear threat. I believe much less threat, though, of nuclear global holocaust.

There is space. I dare not call it a conquest, because for all of our agression and posturing down here in the dirt, we seem awfully timid in the face of all the opportunity which lies out of Mother Earth's gravity well. Foundations have been laid. What was done once can be done again. Maybe not by an America ruled by petty bureaucrats and regulation for regulations sake. Someone will go. I still wish it were me, though that hope fades. My (hypothetical) grandchildren will be there, I believe.

In some ways it seems that we are headed, not into the fictional realm of RAH's Starship Troopers, but instead, belatedly, into the chaos years. There could still be a Nehemiah Scudder in our future. Or a visionary leader. The future is ours to make. The difference each of us makes in the world is important. A hand lent to a friend, or a stranger. Spreading new truths, new lies over this new medium, the internet. But truth will out, sooner, at net speed.

The currency of our new world will, I believe, be integrity. Who you are, what you do, what you say - are you consistent? Can I trust in the veracity of your word? The answers to these questions have never mattered more than today, when we meet, make friend with, work for people we may never meet. I try to let you into my world a little bit, in that you may know me, know who I am, what I believe. Doesn't mean that I actually make any sense!

Issues of importance abound today. I watch Bob and Jim debate one of the hot button issues of our day, drug use and abuse. It wasn't too many years ago when my grandfather lay in a hospital, in intense pain, with no one who would approve the necessary medication to let him die in peace. That isn't right. On the other hand, I have experienced first hand dependence and addiction. I would not have that experience made easier, though done well, the behaviour would correct itself out of the gene pool. Doesn't make it any easier on those around the walking dead, though.

Unfortunately, our kind souls of today (close relatives to NASA bureaucrats and tree-huggers) do too efficient a job. What started as a struggle up the evolutionary ladder for a group of apes that should have known better than to leave the trees in the first place has become a race to see if we can kill ourselves off violently, or through reversing the effects of evolution. Again, please? OK. The apartment complex in which we live has stood for better than 40 years. This last month, the maintenance staff was tasked with making sure that all openings into the pool areas (8 in our complex, and not counting gates, doors, etc.) are less than 4" wide. All this to prevent children from sqeezing through and playing in the water unsupervised, possibly drowning themselves. I was talking to one of the guys, he said, "No kids are getting through here now."

"Yes." I replied. "Except in small pieces." <Insert Evil Grin> If we protect everyone from the consequences of their own stupidity, we breed stupid people. That, too, is self-correcting in the long term. Hell, I am starting to sound depressing myself.

Eventually, there is always hope. What we don't know, what magic may come, lies just around the corner. I don't think these are the best of times, but they sure are interesting. Glad you're along for the journey. Welcome to the New Year, may it bring us new challenges, new ideas, new solutions (along with the host of new problems that always arise).

And thank you for that. So far, with about 11 hours to go in the month, year and century, I have over 15,000 raw hits for the month, as of today. I don't write for hits, I write for myself, because it's fun, and I get to learn new things and try to pass them on. Still, this is cool. Thanks.


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Happy New Year!!!

All is fine here on the left coast of the USA, all computers on the home net running through the changeover without a hassle. We close out the month here at OrbDesigns with 15,400+ hits for December. Meantime, it is late, I have been up since 05:00 Friday, and I am going to bail. Check you tomorrow. Reports up to present indicate that all the Y2K preparations were worth it - flying colors all round. Congratulations, worker bees, we made it! See you later today. G'night.

Especially you over at IP 12.9.162.4, with the failed portscan on Grendel at 22:42 - 12/30/1999. You too, IP 24.28.192.164, trying to get unauthorized ftp access at about 14:00 this last afternoon, and the night before. Ah, a brief jaunt with ftp shows me that visitor 2 is another round from someone through rr.com . . . Die slowly, both of you, just for me, OK? You want something, you write me, ask nice and see what happens. Knock off the scheiss. Goodnight.

The news is, overall, good. Strangely written at times, but good. Let's look at this story on Yahoo News, culled from Reuters © ® (and 'culled' may be the right word).

The millennium computer bug is a legacy of a short cut taken by computer 
programmers in the 1970s and 1980s. To save what was then valuable space d
they recorded dates with two digits, like 89 or 97. They realised that 
this method risked tripping over the two zeros in 2000 but they hoped that 
new technology would have made these computers obsolete by 2000.

But Margaret Beckett, the minister in charge of navigating Britain through 
any potential millennium bug problems, said that any bugs were more likely to 
surface over the coming days as people go back to work and indeed up until 
the leap day on February 29 -- when computer crashes have also been forecast 
due to the unusual date, which only occurs every four years.

Meantime, there is this resource, from the IEEE website, which talks about the birth of DVD, and the encryption/watermark schemes used to protect content. My preliminary read of this paper indicated that claims made by the defense re. the DVD CCA injunction suit are correct - DeCSS is not an integral part of pirating DVD discs. I cannot use DeCSS to make perfect copies of my DVD movie onto another DVD-disk. DeCSS does allow me to make 'fair use' copies of media which I own, under court-tested law. It also allows me to view DVD movies on my computer which runs Linux and has a DVD player, something NO vendor has provided.

Happy NFL Sunday, campers. Last one before the playoffs, right? I don't know, since I really haven't watched football other than Superbowls for about the last 10 years. Who is supposed to go this year, anyway? As I note at the top, incorrectly, 'Day before work.' Incorrectly because I am going in this morning, to fire up all the machines I shut down on Friday, and do some ritual sacrifice, a few chants and dances, then test the little buggers to see that everything is still working all right.

Now into the mailbag, if any. First, a research project from Dr. Keyboard...

Subject: Copying distribution media
Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2000 09:50:35 +0100
From: Chris Ward-Johnson <[email protected]>

Brian
You wrote on Saturday, "DeCSS does allow me to make 'fair use' copies of
media which I own, under court-tested law."
I've been involved in a discussion with Microsoft in the UK over the past
month about a reader who wrote to me about copying his original Office 97
CD. He used a copy of it in his workplace (a university) because his
original disc had been stolen a couple of times by students. He rationalised
that he was only using one copy of the program at a time and was therefore
complying with the terms of his licence from Microsoft.
However, when he called for technical support and told them he was using a
copy of his CD, the tech support person told him that he was a software
pirate and refused to help.
I escalated this for him up to the top support guy in the UK who apologised
to the reader but said that, yes, technically he was a software pirate and
Microsoft does not allow the copying of its distribution CDs. My reader
argued that when software was distributed on floppies we were always told to
copy them straight away and use the copies, but Microsoft argued that this
was when the software actually ran from floppies. The idea is to keep the
original safe and run software from copies, and now they consider the
installation on your hard disc to be the copy. I didn't get into what this
means we should do with programs like Encarta which need the CD to run -
should we be making a copy of that? Or just the data files?
I've also recently been advising readers how to copy the contents of a
specific CD onto their hard disc to make it run more quickly - I've got the
entire Microsoft AutoRoute CD on my laptop HD, for example, to do map
routing when I'm out as the laptop doesn't have a CD drive.
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of asking if you happen to know any
specific examples of making fair copies which have been tested in court?
Personally, I think Microsoft are being heavy-handed here with a cautious
user who's trying to ensure that illegal copies of his software don't escape
into the wild, but any pointers you can offer would be great.

Regards

Chris Ward-Johnson
Dr Keyboard - Computing Answers You Can Understand
http://www.drkeyboard.co.uk

You have a broken link at the bottom of 
(http://216.102.91.55/bpages/z19991226.html). 
The link to Next Week doesn't work.
 
Shawn

Subject: RE: Copying distribution media
Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2000 08:57:23 -0500
From: Robert Bruce Thompson 
To: 'Chris Ward-Johnson' 

Technically, I think Microsoft was right. US law permits making one archive
copy. It could be argued that that means an exact copy of the distribution
CD, because installing the CD to a computer does not make an exact copy of
it.

However, by US law, the distribution CD and the archive copy are one. That
is, if I lose or give away the original CD, I have also lost or given away
my right to use the archive CD, if there is any chance that the original CD
may be used by someone else. In the case of giving away, I must deliver the
archive CD with the original, or destroy the archive CD. In the case of
losing the CD, it depends on how I lost it. If it just disappeared, I am no
longer entitled to use the copy, which is legally presumed to have
disappeared as well. If I stepped on it and broke it, on the other hand, I
can continue to use the archive copy, and can in fact make a copy of the
copy to serve as the new backup.

In your case, what was stolen was not just the physical copy of the CD. The
thieves also stole this person's right to use the copy. So, yes, he suffered
an actual substantial loss, rather than just the trivial loss of a CD copy.
The same would have been true, incidentally, if what had been stolen was the
archive copy, although that would obviously be more difficult for Microsoft
to prove.

I don't know which portions of this mess are US copyright law and which
Berne Convention, so if your user is in the UK he may find that his
situation is different. Probably he will be worse off, because I believe the
right to make one archive copy is a part of US law, but not of the Berne
Convention, and not of UK copyright law.

Bob

--
Robert Bruce Thompson
[email protected] 
http://www.ttgnet.com

And if I have to laugh, you have to laugh. It's a law, somewhere. Thank you, Nathan. BTW, check the bottom one for sure - it's relevant.

Spock: Blood is thicker than water, and much greener.
Star Trek is On !!!! -- Operator Halted!
Star Trek VII: JTK - directed by Oliver Stone!
Star Trek VIII:  The Wrath of Moderator.
Star Trek XVII - The Search for Shatner's Teeth
Stimpy of Borg. Happiness is futile. Joy is irrelevant.
Strangely, Data finds himself relating to HEAVY METAL.
Subspace - The next best thing to beaming there.
Tagline for sale:  Only 2 bars gold pressed latinum!
Tarzan of Borg: Me assimilate. You assimilated.
Tax increases are irrelevent: Clinton of Borg.
Tennis is irrelevant. - Bjorn Borg
Terminator of Borg.  Hasta Lassimilation, Baby!
Terror: A female Klingon with PMS.
Thank you for pushing the self destruct button.
That's an ill Hedgehog, Captain
The best diplomat is a fully charged phaser!
The Bizzaro Borg - Me do it your way! My way unrelevant!
The Borg assimilated & all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
The Borg Ship - " It's Hip To Be Square"
The Borg- We need 1500 lg pizzas. All will be assimilated
The dilithium UARTs won't take this baud rate much longer
The Do-It-Yourself Borg kit.  Assimilation required.
TheBorgAreBackAn'There'sGonnaBeTroubleHeyNaHeyNa...
There's no intelligent life here Scotty -- Beam me up
Thinking quickly Spock opens a can of peas with his ears.
This looks like a job for dadadaDAH Wesley!
This phenomenon is JUST like the one we just saw! -Data
Tigger of Borg: A Tigger can assimilate anything.
Tim Taylor of Borg. Assimulation gives you more power!
To "BAUD"ly go where no man has gone before.....
To baldly go where no one has gone before : Picard
Trekkers work out at the He's Dead Gym.
Troi of Borg. Your Chocolate will be assimilated.
Tweety of Borg.  I tawt I attimilated a Puddy Tat!
Tweety of Borg: You wiww be assimewated!
Uhura of Borg:  Assimalation frequencies open, sir.
Upon seeing Deanna shopping, Riker extends his wallet.
Vader of Borg:   *I* am your assimilator Luke...
We are Echosia of Borg. . . you have been assimilated.
We assimilate things.  Things to make us go...-Borgled
We have phasers.  I vote we blast 'em!
We replaced the Enterprise's dilithium crystals w/Folgers
We replaced THEIR coffee with dilithium crystals
Wesley of Borg, can I assimilate the ship please?
Wesley to Picard: Captain, can I drive? Pretty please??
Wesley's temper tantrum: "I want a new universe for Xmas"
What were you this time? The wine bottle? - Quark to Odo
What's up, Doc? - Ensign Bugs to Crusher
While drunk, O'Brien builds a leprechaun transporter.
Why was Worf stuck to the ceiling? Static Klingon!
Worf Burger:  You'll get it our way, and LIKE IT!
Worf hides for days knowing his bumps have gone flat.
Worf! Why are Data's parts in a box labeled "April Fool"?
Worf, SCREW the Prime Directive. Give the Borg Windows!
Worf: "Shields failing!" Picard: "Give 'em more homework"
Wrappers are futile. Chocolate will be assimilated.
Yoda of Borg.  Assimilated you will be, hmmm?
Yosemite Sam of Borg: Prepare to be assimilated, y'all.
You Klingon son, you killed my bastard!  Got that wrong.
You saved us all. Don't you remember? - Kirk
Your jelly doughnuts will be assimilated. Elvis of Borg.
Your suffering will be found, Jim. - Spock
Zsa Zsa of Borg. Prepare to be assimilated, dahling.
"Very good, Worf... Eat any good books lately?" - Q
Arachnophobic Tholians ... on the next Uhura show.
No viruses detected. Must be a pair of Nanites.
Starfleet Academy has a drama department???
Quark Express - A Ferengi Drawing program.
"Get unstuck, and continue the briefing." - Picard
Avon Lady of Borg:  Mary Kay will be assimilated!
Klingon philosophy - Do unto others (period!)
Mr. Worf.....................FIRE!
Scotty!  Three to beam u�2:��b�� NO CARRIER
...Does anyone want to see setting 2 ?? - Guinan
"A VERY small joke, ensign..." - Spock
Can Odo carry a tune in a bucket?
"I believe my response would be, 'Go To Hell'." -Spock
All the Borg left were these self-sealing stembolts.
Marvin of Borg: Don't talk to us about irrelevant life..
and this is my other brother Darrell of Borg, and...
Blonde Borgs have the same fun.
I am a Dalek of Borg, Assimilate! Assimilate!
Missionary of Borg: You will be assimilated and converted
AckbarBorg: We can't repel Assimilation of that magnitude
Agassi of Borg:  Before I assimilate you, is my hair okay
Alfred E. Neuman, of Borg.  What, me assimilate?
Asimov of Borg: The Three Laws of Assimilation...
Aussie of Borg: I have come to assimilate your lager!
Avon of Borg: I don't trust anyone I haven't assimilated.
Barney of Borg: Being assimilated is fun.
Barney Borg: I love you. You love me. We're a happy Borg.
Barney of Borg: Sesame Street will be assimilated!
Barney Borg: You will be assimilated because I love you!
Barnum of Borg: There's one assimilated every minute.
Ben of Borg:  I sense something... something irrelevant..
I am Berman of Borg... Plots are irrelevant..
Bones of Borg: He's assimilated, Jim.
Buffalo Bob of Borg.  What time is it?  Assimilation time
Qqq Q Qqq qqqQqqq : Continuum family portrait
It's a duck eat duck world, and I'm all out of quackers!
We are Daleks of Borg, ASSIMILATE! AS-SIM-IL-ATE!
Yoda of Borg:Assimilated you will be!Futile is resistence
Very funny Scottie...  now beam down my pants.
Kirk: I'm -- too sexy. Period. I'm -- too sex-y. Period.
I am Pentium of Borg. Prepare to be approximated.